News and Open Source Releases

People who run the Steam gaming portal on Linux received some good news this week. Following the news in August that Valve was making it possible for Linux users to run some Windows gaming titles through a WINE fork called Proton, the collection of games Linux users can run has expanded rapidly. "Proton is a new tool released by Valve Software that has been integrated with Steam Play to make playing Windows games on Linux as simple as hitting the Play button within Steam. Underneath the hood, Proton comprises other popular tools like Wine and DXVK among others that a gamer would otherwise have to install and maintain themselves. This greatly eases the burden for users to switch to Linux without having to learn the underlying systems or losing access to a large part of their library of games. " The ProtonDB website now lists over 2,600 Windows games which can be run on Linux using a combination of Steam and the Proton compatibility software.